What the Smurf?

The other day, I woke up in a foul mood, and wanted to start cursing nearly immediately. I then thought, "Hey, I should start saying other things instead of cursing. You know, for the kids."

My friend and I discussed on the phone at some point the backwoods redneck Southern terms, "dagnabbit" (heard by my friend while watching Disney's The Fox and the Hound), and I explained the related terms, "dadgummit," and "dadblame" which were used frequently by my grandparents and my father. Those are all good faux-swears, if I can start using them instead of my go-to words in time of stress or anger: fuck, shit, fucking shit, fuckety-fuck, fuckety-shit, shitty fuck...you probably get the idea.

Growing up, we watched Saturday morning cartoons. That was the prime time for cartoons, back in the day. Of course, on weekday mornings, I could watch Scooby-Doo reruns, my favorite. (Sundays just sucked, as far as TV was concerned. Because we didn't go to church, we were subjected to the subtle Christian indoctrination of Davey and Goliath.
Well, my brother and I, at least. My sister always slept late on Sundays, so never sat around watching this lame claymation thing with us.)

Yes, my kids will grow up hearing me say, "When I was a kid, we only got to watch the good cartoons on Saturday morning! Just once a week! We didn't have cartoons on DVD or cable at our beck and call. No! Heck, we didn't even have DVDs! We had to wait until the mid-80s before we even had a dag-burn VHS!" At which point, the confused children will ask what a VHS is, and why I've turned into a grumpy old prospector.

Anyway, one cartoon that debuted sometime in the early 80s on NBC was The Smurfs. When this first came on, my sister (this was one I don't remember my brother watching) and I loved it! I remember watching with our neighbors, too. It was a exciting, adventure-filled cartoon. That was until the evil Gargamel (why the fuck smurf did this guy want to eat the smurfs so badly? Were there no animals around to eat? Seriously, did he think blue human-like creatures would be really tasty?) decided to trap some smurfs with the creation of Smurfette.

I remember watching this episode at the neighbors' house. The three of us watched as Gargamel created a lady smurf to lure in those other smurfs. In hindsight, this raises some good questions: How did Gargamel create a living smurf from thin air (or twigs and herbs, or whatever the fuck smurf he used)? If he can do that, why doesn't he just make more smurfs to eat, instead of trying to kill the ones living happily smurfily in their mushroom village? And why does he make a girl? It seems since there are only male/unisex smurfs, they must reproduce asexually. Smurfette isn't going to be attractive to them sexually if they have no sexual organs. Hmm. Anyway, Gargamel creates Smurfette, but she is not like the Smurfette we are expecting. We know Smurfette has long blond hair cascading from her cap. This one does not. No, she has a short, black, scraggly-looking bob. The three of us, all brunettes, exchanged confused looks. Isn't the Smurfette figurine blond? (The plastic Smurf figurines were already around everywhere before the cartoon came out.)

By the end of the episode, Papa Smurf had magically smurfily transformed the evil, brunette, Gargamel-created Smurfette into a real, good, blonde Smurfette. Even as kids, we brunettes were annoyed by that. Why did she get blonde hair when she turned good? What's wrong with black hair? This time we exchanged angry looks.

No, really, that happened. We soon grew tired of The Smurfs, long before it went off the air in 1990 (yeah, it was on that long!). The smurf this and smurfing that was annoying, as was the fact that we knew Gargamel and his cat Azrael were never going to catch the Smurfs. (I hope they came up with some new story lines after the first few years. I can't imagine nearly 10 years of that tired Gargamel and Azrael shit smurf.)

Of course, as a child, I didn't analyze the episode to death as I can now, comparing Smurfette to Eve in the Garden of Eden, with Gargamel being Satan, and Papa Smurf some kind of God or Christ figure who redeems the Smurf world by taking the sinful black hair away from evil Smurfette and turning her into a good Smurf.

What's the point of all this rambling on about a cartoon from the 80s? Well, that I have the perfect word to use in place of my frequent swearing: SMURF!

Didn't like this post? Well SMURF YOU! GO SMURF YOURSELF, YOU SMURFIN' SMURF!